Week In Review: George Micheal, Carrie Fisher etc.

Even this late in the year the passings continue.  George Michael, famed for Wham! and his album Faith passed away on Christmas Day from heart failure, he was 53.  Death has been everywhere this year and really have thinned the musicians out there, beginning with David Bowie and now Michael. I wasn't a big fan and so be it, but I do find Wham! I'm Your Man to be a guilty pleasure listening more than Wake Me Up Before You Go Go and Faith had a nice collection of different songs from I Want Your Sex to the rockabilly title track.

Carrie Fisher en route to L.A. suffered a heart attack and never recovered, passing away early Tuesday Morning, she was 60.  Fisher also best known for playing in Star Wars but I loved her as the crazy person trying to kill The Blues Brothers and posting a autobiography called Postcards From The Edge, to which I stole the title to name an album that I did back in 1988.   She was married to Paul Simon which had its ups and downs before they called it a day.  In essence, her work is done on this planet.  She will be missed.  And then the next day her mom Debbie Reynolds joined her in the afterlife, she suffered a stroke but in essence she died of a broken heart.  She was 84.

Getting to football, The San Diego Chargers may as well be dead,  Josh Lambo, had one field goal blocked and another went wide right and Cleveland won their first game of the year.  While Lambo gets the blame for the loss,  Phillip "Fumbles and Interceptions" Rivers is now turned the ball over 19 times this season, and basically he might be replacing Dan Fouts in all time passing and so forth, he remains one of the annoying quarterbacks for the Chargers and after 12 years this year has been his most disappointing.  He couldn't rally the Chargers to beat the Raiders and then his kicker let him down.  But in all fairness the Chargers have blown 6 games with leads.  They may as fire Mike McCoy, they may as well give Rivers his walking papers and start anew once they move it up to Los Angeles.   Had they held the leads they could be challenging Kansas City and Oakland for the top spot but then again, when they blew a 24 point lead in Kansas City this season, it was of things to come.  And not for the better.  Basically the below picture will leave the legacy of Phillip Rivers to be a whiner.  He should apply for a job as a baker, he does make a lot of turnovers.....

I think she can play better QB than Rivers.  This week's eye candy...cuz we need something to cheer us up.

For Christmas here, we went from 2 below last Sunday to 40 degrees and rain and clouds most of the day with the usual dumb fucks driving NASCAR speeds on icy covered roads.  I remember of Christmas past, of 1999 when Olivia came down to visit us from Oregon and ended up getting phenomena for 3 months afterwards.  Then two winters of Nicole (2010, the coldest Christmas it seems and we drove in the old Purple Corsica which kept having a flat tire and on New Years Day looking for a place with air to fill the damn tire up, and 2011).  Alas Nicole was the last to see our family, The Bickersons in action and usually new potential dates are scared away after the first meeting.  Last year was a disaster but this year, there were no blowups, everybody got along fine and Santa was very good to me.   Hopefully all of us will be back next Christmas.   And you too as well.

My good friend Mark didn't have a good Christmas flight, on the way to CR, his plane had mechanical trouble  and then flew back to Kansas City of all places.  What should have been a four flight turned out to a day and an half.  Mark didn't get here till 4 AM and still to wait for a rental car place to open up at 6 to get a car.  And that's one of the reasons why I don't fly in the wintertime.  Actually I don't fly at all anymore.  Too much bullshit to deal with and it usually starts with the TSA.

(Photo: AP)

As we wind down this year, the uncertainly of next year will be on the horizon, the 45th President of the USA, the Failed Reality Star and of course the GOP in control of everything.   Already gas prices have gone up from 1.89 to 2.25 in the three weeks and it's not even springtime.  It wouldn't surprise me to see the return of 3 dollar a gallon gas by summertime with the usual bullshit excuses of the raises, OPEC, leaky oil polluting the water supply.  Perhaps the people who died in 2016 made the right choice of exiting here before the Failed Reality Star becomes the POTUS.  He certainly can't keep off Twitter.  Will things change around?  Probably, as prices continue to rise but no businesses want to pay anybody 15 dollars an hour.  Things go up, gas, electric, insurance, HEALTH insurance, food etc etc.   But there's so much fake news out there, it's hard to tell what's the truth and what is bullshit.  In the meanwhile some of the Rockettes don't want to partake into the gala presidential celebration of the failed reality star on Jan 20.  The guess is that Mike Love's Beach Boys will have the honors, but I'm surprised Ted Nugent wasn't asked to do that, nor Charlie Daniels.

A retraction to a blog, Neil Young's Peace Trail did pop on the Billboard Chart at number 75 last week and then dropped out of the top 200 the next week.  I thought the record was good enough to be included in my top 20 best of 2016 and still think it's a decent listen.  But if Neil Young would take the time to develop the songs rather than toss them out he still might have a album for the ages, like After The Gold Rush or Rust Never Sleeps.  Perhaps he should take a breather before issuing a new album next year to you know he will.  Perhaps people are getting burned out of his music or just don't care. I still do. 

I guess that's all the news and happenings for now.  Tune in next time for 2016, the year in review.  It should be a hit.